Missing Inventory Item in Chapter 8 (Probable Spoilers)

[reboog]

The shovel dissapeared from my inventory in Chapter 8.  I walk out of the cabin while night is falling and have it.  Then Al goes to the X spot.  All is good, I still have the shovel.

 Then I leave the 'X' spot to go to town.  When I reach the town screen, the shovel has vanished from inventory.

 Do I need the shovel later in the game?  

 Perhaps at the place I'm stuck in Chapter 9?

 This appears to the be the show stopper for me.

----

 And while I'm talking about bugs, there is an odd thing.  I have a Dell 20 inch flat screen monitor hooked up to the VGA out of a laptop.  I usually have this set up so that the laptop screen is off, and the secondary screen is primary.

 When I play the game in this setting, the right corner of the screen is cut off.  As an example, the bartender never shows up on the screen.  The pop in the top right corner will never show up.  ( etc.. etc.. )

 ( My solution was to mirror the monitors, since the laptop screen will correctly display the game without cutting off)

[Pidgeot]

As far as the monitor is concerned, if you have any controls on the monitor to alter how the sceren displays things, you might need to move the image using those controls. It's a common sight when a monitor has not used a particular video mode before.

An alternative is to play in windowed mode, of course.

[reboog]

As far as the monitor is concerned, if you have any controls on the monitor to alter how the sceren displays things, you might need to move the image using those controls. It's a common sight when a monitor has not used a particular video mode before.

An alternative is to play in windowed mode, of course.

 Such controls had no affect, I spent an hour fiddling w/ them last night.  Selecting the 2x nearest-neighbour option addressed the issue.  The game runs a little slower but not by much.

 As far as the missing shovel. there was a spot where I could have used the shovel (thus rendering it useless and removing it from inventory), but didn't.  It was confusing to have it vanish, but I suppose that was the 'alternate' option in case people didn't try to use it.

 My problem in chapter 9 had nothing to do with the shovel.

[Erpy]

The shovel dissapeared from my inventory in Chapter 8.  I walk out of the cabin while night is falling and have it.  Then Al goes to the X spot.  All is good, I still have the shovel.

Then I leave the 'X' spot to go to town.  When I reach the town screen, the shovel has vanished from inventory.

Do I need the shovel later in the game?

About the shovel:

[spoiler]It's a red herring. The player is given the impression he can use it to create a tunnel to the path leading to the mine, but it'll always break. It's removed because it's just intended to cause a little confusion at that particular screen, not in any scene down the road. You never use it in chapter 9.[/spoiler]

Perhaps at the place I'm stuck in Chapter 9?

This appears to the be the show stopper for me.

Where exactly are you stuck?

[reboog]

I finished the game.

 At the point I wrote the note, I was trying to figure out how to flick the train track switch.  I figured a shovel handle would do the job (but couldn't find it in my inventory).  Conceptually I was pretty close, but had missed the screen that had the item I needed to solve the puzzle.

 The solution to the 'digging' puzzle was so obvious, I never even thought of using it.